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Maker’s Mark Whiskeys: A ReMarkable Development

Growing up Southern, I lived under a certain set of assumptions; cultural touchstones that Southerners felt, for generations, that they owned, and only grudgingly shared with the rest of America: NASCAR, sausage gravy biscuits, bluegrass and country music, Hee-Haw, watermelon, fried green tomatoes, Dixie Beer, dynamitin’ fish, moon pies, moonshine (obviously), bib overalls, cowboy boots (irrationally), and maybe the most omnipresent and Southern to its core, Bourbon.

Bourbon – the liquid you’d get, as the old mountain saying goes, “if you wrung out Kentucky and Tennessee and filled up Florida” – is one of the oldest cultural facts of life of the Old and New Souths. It’s a source of Southern pride of a sort that even breaks down to regional debate. Tennessee whiskey purists allow as how there’s some right fine hooch made in Kentucky – and vice-versa – but wouldn’t dream of making a habit of “that pantywaist Bluegrass-state stuff“. Kentucky fires back: “Tennessee whiskey is like Tennessee women: a little ugly and rough around the edges“. (Totally NOT true, either part of that proposition) Of course, Southern states will become tribal about anything, but whiskey and football are the Hot Buttons and you risk being blasé or oblivious to either at the peril of your Country Boy cred.

As a young Southern man, I didn’t like Bourbon. In my relentlessly perverse way, I didn’t like NASCAR, watermelon, and a bunch of other inherited Southernisms and shunned them proudly, well into my late 30s. But I’ve been served Bourbon since the day of my majority by either A) other Southerners, on the assumption that “Well, all Southerners like Bourbon!“, or B) Non-Southerners who hear the first twangy, Magnolia-drenched ten words come out of my pie-hole and go running for whatever bottle in their liquor cabinet says “Tennessee” or “Kentucky” on it because, as everybody knows, “Well, all Southerners like Bourbon!”

Maddening.

But, as I eased into my forties, I finally resolved to go back and examine our high-octane regional beverage with the same critical eye I’d been using in my work in the wine trade. And the results were…illuminating.

Bourbon, despite its near-universal rep as the stuff half-naked rednecks swill from the bottle at tractor-pulls and the Southern 500, proved to be a remarkably complex and even subtle liquid, with nearly every producer putting their own personal stamp on the flavor profile. I can’t say that it will ever displace my beloved single-malt Islay or Highlands Scotches as my own hard beverage of choice but I’ve now tasted just about every Bourbon available here in WA state and have come to appreciate – and even buy, occasionally – Bourbons that, to be honest, would probably horrify a real purist but which strike a deep, soulful chord within my persistently Southern heart. I found, to my great surprise, that many of the Carolina truisms I picked up about Bourbon are unshakably true..and the foremost of these is the fundamental fineness and special quality of Maker’s Mark.

Maker's Mark Master Distiller Greg Davis

In my youth, it was common knowledge that there’s the stuff you drink on the weekends – and dump into a Coke or a Mountain Dew or use to make any of 250 sweet, gag-inducing cocktails – and there’s “sippin’ whiskey”, the stuff that it’s considered trashy and ill-mannered to taint with anything other than one or two ice cubes or a splash of “branch water”, that elusive Southern cliché which, I believe, nobody could define and certainly nobody would actually drink since, as any Southern kid knows, a “branch” is a tiny creek that’s full of all sorts of debris which would instantly transform your pristine glass of sippin’ whiskey into the approximate contents of a mud puddle.

Maker’s Mark has always been the sane, affordable, entry-level passage to the world of “serious Bourbon”. It’s unquestionably fine without a trace of prissy. It’s been made exactly the same way for 58 years and it’s the only whiskey the Maker’s Mark folks made…until recently. Spend six decades doing the same thing over and over again and see if you don’t get the hang of it. Maker’s Mark got the hang of Bourbon a long time ago and, if their quality has ever slipped, I’ve never noticed it and know no one who has ever complained about it. For many young Southerners, like the people I hung with in Virginia and North Carolina, Maker’s is the splurge Bourbon, the one you buy when you feel like something a couple of cuts better than your knee-jerk Medley Brothers or Elijah or Evan or whatever new thing you found at the ABC store. And it is, without question, obviously and immediately better. I’ve laid Maker’s on several dozen whiskey drinkers who hadn’t tried it, over the past 20 years in Seattle, and most drink it regularly now. And why not? If what you’re looking for in a Bourbon is the classic, time-tested caramel, nut, wood, citrus, and muscle, this stuff has it in spades. But the texture of it is the greatest surprise. It’s impossibly smooth and agreeable; no hard edges, a good ol’ dawg that never bites back. Flavor for days, lovely color in the glass, fine, lingering finish…how in the world could you ever improve on that? Certainly, they were happy with it at the distillery, since they refused to tinker with it at all for almost sixty years.

So, the recent release of Maker’s 46, the new luxury whiskey, was a real eye-opener for a lot of Bourbon lovers.

In typical Kentucky fashion, the Samuels family and master distiller Greg Davis (whose admonition from Bill Samuels, upon taking the job, was , “Don’t screw it up!“) approached the introduction of the first regular-production new whisky from MM in the most direct way possible: start with the original whisky and modify it. No trekking around your rear end to get to your elbow in Loreto, Kentucky. We got us a good product here, so let’s just nudge it a little and see what we get. So, batches of the original Marker’s Mark are transferred to used oak barrels and fire-seared oak staves are mounted inside before the whole business is resealed. As they do with the regular Maker’s, Davis and his crew use no set timetable or the calendar to decide when the whisky is ready. The release of any batch of Maker’s Mark is completely determined by taste. Davis and Bill Samuels, Jr. , and the other staff taste periodically and when everybody’s happy, it’s ready. If you’ve never known a Kentuckian or spent any time there, let me assure you that this is a very Kentucky way of doing business and it keeps a critical human element involved; one that has always allowed Maker’s to connect with their customers in a more direct and soulful way. 46 comes out of the barrels when that big, mellow, caramel/toast/smoke/vanilla character almost leaps out of the glass. The original MM has this exact same flavor profile on a slightly smaller scale, minus the toast and smoke. The additional aging is minimal, so the color isn’t that different and the texture is only slightly more viscous. But the added grace notes are amazingly discrete and create a sensual connection to this whisky, for me, that is only approached by a handful of great Islay Scotches, Bunnahabhain, and Pendleton 1910.

Unlike a lot of finer Bourbons, Maker’s doesn’t rely on the spicier, larger flavor palate of rye to create it’s mouth-filling flavors. The basis of MM has always been red winter wheat replacing the rye, butressed with malted barley and yellow corn. The trademark smoothness comes from the wheat, which is less assertive but more seamless than the rambunctious rye.

Tasting these two landmark American whiskys – and, yes, that’s how the Samuelses have always spelled it, without the penultimate “e” – was an absolute joy for me. They carried me back powerfully to my happy 20-something years in North Carolina and reinforced the pride I still take in many aspects of Southern culture. For any American whisky – or whiskey – afficionado, Maker’s Mark and now 46 are an essential and vastly enjoyable chapter in our native spirits and just as bangin’ delicious as the original has been for 58 years. Neither is expensive, both are exceptionally well-made, and there’s enough to go around. As their motto says, “It Is What It Isn’t”: isn’t prissy, isn’t crammed with artifice, isn’t trendy, isn’t a wallet-buster, isn’t scarce…and isn’t dispensable, if you appreciate and enjoy fine American spirits.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..